An Excerpt From...

Untamed by
Helen Kirkman

Wytch Heath, near Wareham, the South Coast of England, AD 876

This time the dream of him was different. The dark warrior that had invaded her dreams was closer. Aurinia caught the sense of danger from him and her breath sharpened, even in the bands of a sleep that was at once real and unreal.

She saw his face first, only that, the strong lines and the night-black hair, the eyes dark as ripe sloe berries, and her heart tightened on the familiar dizzying ache.

Light and shadow from her empty hall flickered over her closed eyelids and the dream pulled her down, overmastering her senses, making them catch fire. He called to her, her dark warrior with the costly armour and the eight strands of gold at his neck. His presence and the potent sense of his vitality overwhelmed her. But this time the shadowy bond was fierce, intensified by the danger. Pain.

She smelled the blood. It was all around him, terrifying and death-filled, like the shouting.

He saw her, had sensed her, five miles away on the battlefield.

The brilliant eyes locked for one burning instant with hers and the unspoken bond snapped tight, frightening and deep. Then the contact broke. She saw him swing round, the swift sudden movement of the leaf-bladed spear in his hand, its flight like lightning through the dark, a bright curving arc of terror.

Aurinia's fist clenched, hard against the patched linen of her dress. The shouts all around him were in Danish, Viking words. He was not Danish, with his dark eyes, fine high-bridged nose and his bronzed skin that spoke of southern climes.

Then even as she watched, caught in the dreaming, the sharp arrow points ripped through the air, a death rain hissing toward him, and the slighter, unarmoured figure next to him fell. The screaming voices, the fast feet of the Vikings, rushed forward like a wave.

He had kept his feet, but he would have to turn, run. Run. Her heart spoke to him across distance and time that had no meaning, as though they were one, she and the dark warrior who fought so bitterly against odds that were desperate. As though he could feel the desperation in her own heart, as though his unmatched strength had the power to penetrate the frozen isolation that held her trapped in this empty hall, to shatter it with his heat. As though they could touch.

Run.... She watched him unsheathe the glittering line of a broad-bladed sword. She could smell death, death and wounds.

He did not turn back. He stepped in front of the fallen man. The wave broke over him.

And she--The desperation flooded her heart, terrible, matched by a raw will.

"Lady!"

The sharp sound of Huda's voice shocked through her, real, close. The grip of her steward's hand on her shoulder shook her awake in the quiet hall at Wytch Heath. His breath rasped with his fear.

She was shivering. The dream dissipated, lost like the hot vital grace of the dark-haired man.

"Lady Aurinia..." Huda's voice, anxious, demanding, cut through, breaking the sleep that had come over her as she'd sat beside the window. The only retainer who had remained faithful to her had come to tell her what she already knew. That the invading Vikings and the troops of King Alfred of Wessex were fighting at Wareham, not five miles from here.

"...there is a battle. Men fleeing from the army may force their way through here."

"They cannot." Aurinia sat up, forcing movement through her stiffened body, every muscle wound tight with tension. One thing in this world was certain. No stranger had ever reached the hall at Wytch Heath. The pure isolation of her home stood...